


what's in the blink of an eye

by fthh



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst and Feels, F/F, Immortals AU, Light Angst, at the most, that's angst with a question mark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24687073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fthh/pseuds/fthh
Summary: a hundred years after their break-up, Dorothea and Petra meet up again.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault/Petra Macneary
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	what's in the blink of an eye

**Author's Note:**

> listened to "don't make it harder on me" by chloe x halle and "it's always you" by chet baker throughout writing this.
> 
> (title taken from "monday's rain" by the clientele)
> 
> rated t bc of some implications? i would rather err on the side of caution

It’s an old thing, gathering dust at the back of Dorothea’s closet. It’s the oldest thing she owns. She wonders for a second if Petra still keeps hers. Dorothea doesn’t come to a conclusion. Why would she keep it?

It’s almost as old as she is. It’s a miracle, really, that Dorothea’s small wooden bird is still intact, in one solid whole. Nostalgia, perhaps. She remembers slamming it into the back of the closet, along with Petra’s stuff, a hundred years ago.

Goddess, has it really been a hundred years now?

That must mean…

She’s been alive for almost a millennium, now. She doesn’t remember her exact age — she’d stopped counting yearly and started noting every hundred years when she’d realised — at her three-hundred-and-fiftieth — that she wasn’t dying. Not anytime soon, anyway.

How’s Petra doing? She finds her mind wandering in that direction more often than not, lately. Next to the bird is a framed picture of the two of them.

She traces a finger over the mark under Petra’s eye. She can still feel it, the softness of Petra’s skin, the warmth of her gaze.

Dorothea takes the bird outside to the balcony and leans against the railing. She doesn’t need to be careful — she can’t die anyway, she thinks bitterly. It’s just that… recovering from an injury is a pain in the ass. It’s  _ more _ of a pain if she doesn’t have anyone taking care of her.

Again, Dorothea notices, it’s happening  _ again. _ She’s distracted. None of her thoughts have come to their natural conclusions. It’s one head-on collision after another. She huffs, frustrated. In front of her, the city of Enbarr is teeming with life, cars moving through the roads like ants. The people are much smaller in comparison, the size of dots, going about their daily lives, whatever that entails. Dorothea would have known, once upon a time.

These days, the humdrum of life doesn’t excite her very much, a white noise she drowns out in the back of her mind.

It’s just that — nothing means anything anymore. When she wakes up, it’s to an empty bed. Even if she’d brought someone over the night before, she rises in the solitude of her quiet apartment along with the sun. Then she’ll get ready for the day — this year she’s gotten a job at an office — she’ll go home, and rinse and repeat. She’d found out a long time ago that having a routine is a nice way to have some sort of structure in her apparently never-ending life.

It’s just —

Perhaps it’s time for a change.

And there it is: the thought that Dorothea has tried to shove back, to bury in the back of her mind for weeks, or maybe months. It’s finally surfaced.

When she looks up, the stars seem to be mocking her, whatever that means. It’s not that she can see much, anyway. The light pollution in Enbarr has only gotten worse as the years march on.

Dorothea sighs in defeat, and directs magic from her fingers to the small toy bird. Her nerves start tingle, the sensation not unfamiliar to her, even after years and years of disuse.

The bird starts glowing, purple and brown and orange. So Petra has indeed kept hers. She doesn’t know  _ why _ she thought Petra would ever have gotten rid of hers. There’s a pang of guilt in her chest, this is  _ Petra _ , and Petra has never once let her down, but she represses those nasty thoughts before they can haunt her.

The bird chirps once, signalling a connection.

It’s too late to back out now.

“Enbarr,” Dorothea whispers to the bird, “next week, you pick the day and time. The corner where we met, they opened a new café, a few months ago. They make delicious mocha lattés. I know you’re particular about that.”

The light dies down and Dorothea relaxes her shoulders — she didn’t even realise she’d been tensing them. She counts to ten, and… nothing.

She sighs again. With the time difference, it’s just about midnight in Brigid where it’s almost four in the morning now. Petra always did keep a normal sleeping schedule, Dorothea recalls with a smile.

Dorothea’s just about to turn in when the toy bird chirps happily in her hands, glowing softly again under the moonlight.

“Tomorrow, lunch,” comes Petra’s voice, clear as day, and Dorothea feels her heart constricting before it starts beating once again. _It’s alive—_ _I’m alive!_ “Well, today— later. Lunch. I shall see you later at lunch. I am in Enbarr.”

Petra’s voice is clipped. Dorothea tries not to dwell too much on that.

.

“Dorothea.”

The woman in question looks up, and oh— there she is. The only constant in this long, tiring life of hers. Petra Macneary. She was Queen of Brigid once.  _ Dorothea _ was Queen of Brigid once. Now they are dead to the world — their matching nearly-thousand-year-old death certificates are a testament to that. They’re remembered in Brigid history books, at least.

(It won’t do well for them if the world knew there are immortals walking among them, after all. Dorothea knows how relentless public attention is.)

“Dorothea?” Petra tries again. “Your mind went away for a second.”

“Petra—”  _ You haven’t aged a day,  _ she wants to say.  _ You are still as radiant as the sun,  _ she wants to say.  _ You are still as beautiful as the day we wed for the fifth time,  _ she wants to day, but doesn’t. “— You look healthy. I’m glad.”

“Thank you. You as well,” Petra says quietly, accepts the steaming mug from Dorothea. She takes a sip and— “You are right. This is very delicious.”

There is a palpable silence between them, each not knowing what to say to the other. What is there to say? Dorothea doesn’t remember a time they weren’t in each other’s lives, discounting the time they spent apart. That’s a thousand years of stories, and they’d been married for a combined time of eight hundred of those years.

What is there to say?

But their reunions always start like this. A few hours of silence, an absence of words, a formation of a space where they can enjoy each other’s company without complication. There’s no rush, after all.

Dorothea smiles at Petra from behind her mug, the thing barely concealing her bashful expression. Perhaps she  _ wants _ Petra to know. Perhaps Petra gets the message, because she is smiling back, but she’s a little smug.

Goddess, Petra hasn’t changed at all.

“So,” Petra starts, after a few minutes of them exchanging furtive glances, “one hundred years, huh?”

“I’ve missed you,” Dorothea says simply. There is no need for lies between them, no need for coyness, not after nearly a thousand years, not after them knowing each other like the backs of their hands.

“And I, you.”

Dorothea feels a familiar warmth bubbling in her chest, and it radiates to the tips of her fingers. But she doesn’t touch Petra, not yet.

“What have you been up to?” Petra asks. They don’t want to talk about the elephant in the room. What’s changed? What made Dorothea crack and call for Petra?

“Nothing much,” Dorothea says. She racks her brain to say something, anything. “You?” is all she comes up with.

“I am much the same.”

They sip at their drinks.

“I don’t even remember,” Dorothea says suddenly, “I don’t even remember why we separated, the last time.”

“Three hundred years is a long time to be married for someone,” Petra reminds her. She leaves it unsaid that before then they’d been married for much longer. “We ran out of stories to tell each other.”

.

Three hundred years is also plenty of time to perfect her technique, Dorothea wants to say. A hundred years apart hasn’t changed it one bit.

All that comes out of Dorothea is a tired but satisfied sigh, as Petra comes back up from between her legs. Petra still knows her way around. She settles in Dorothea’s arms, and once upon a time she would’ve thought this was enough, but there is only silence between them, now.

Perhaps it can be like that again, Petra wants to say.

“I’ve been writing songs.” Dorothea trails her hand over Petra’s abdomen, and she shivers at the touch. “I learned, like, ten new instruments.”

“Oh?” Petra shivers again. Dorothea pulls her blanket up to her waist, but continues her ministrations. She doesn’t remember, or perhaps more accurately, she doesn’t want to acknowledge the fact that Petra doesn’t get cold easily, that this visceral reaction is to her touch. “You haven’t been interested in music in a long time.”

“Yeah, I found my old music sheets when I was putting your stuff away.”

“I have not heard you sing in a long time.” Petra pointedly ignores the latter part of Dorothea’s statement. They’ve gone through this many times — they’ve gone far past the point of caring. “Remember when you were a lounge singer for a time?”

“Yeah.” Dorothea chuckles at the memory. Petra had been particularly fond of the hat she liked to wear on stage. “Shame I can’t sing in public anymore. They have pictures of me from then.”

Petra sits up, cross-legged next to Dorothea, who shamelessly rakes her eyes over Petra’s body. She pays it no mind, just says, “Why not now?”

“Huh?”

“Sing for me, now. I’ve missed your voice.”

“I haven’t warmed up my, uh, vocal cords.”

“Oh,” Petra says, dejected. “I thought— we were—”

“We are!” Dorothea bolts up, hands immediately reaching for Petra’s. “I— we—”

They fall silent, and when Petra finally meets Dorothea’s gaze, they both burst into laughter. Dorothea lets go of her hands to clutch at her stomach.

When they calm down, Dorothea leans forward, draping herself lazily over Petra’s body, seeking her warmth wherever she can. “I really mean it,” she says into the skin at Petra’s shoulder, her voice slightly muffled. Petra, in turn, squirms at the sensation, ticklish. “I haven’t been singing for like, a year or two. The guitar’s still in the closet.”

“Why don’t you get ready, while I cook something up for us? I’ve been learning,” Petra whispers into the air. When Dorothea looks up at her, it’s with a smile and batted eyelashes. Her heart starts stuttering again.

“Hi,” is all Dorothea says. From her position, she can feel the irregular rhythm of Petra’s heartbeat. “I meant it, you know. I missed you a lot. That’s why I called you.”

“I missed you too.”

“Can we— can we try again? You and me?”

“For you, my love, a thousand times.”

(Petra doesn’t know how long they’re going to last this time around. It’s okay, she reckons. They have forever.)

**Author's Note:**

> im pretty sure this is the first time i've written angst. i wonder how i've done.
> 
> and yes, the concept of forever terrifies me
> 
> [x](https://twitter.com/clonebutt)


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